Endgame Barding Guide by Ghlin
Category:Guides This build will cost around 2 Million gil total. Add Apollo's staff/Light Grip and V.Cloak and you're around 3 Million gil total. Compared to other jobs you're actually getting off pretty cheap. Ok how good is this build? CHR 70+50 Skill 450+24 and 8/8 singing puts you at +42 Skill/Macc so you're at 492/120. 20 Extra CHR is like Macc+10 as well. So you're at a pseudo 500/100 build. It will work. This walmart build, as you can see, is mostly CHR gear because that's all you can really get from the AH. But that's ok. This is a good start and you'll have very favorable resists for just about everything that you do. Capping Songs The following chart will show how much skill (past capped skill) is needed to attain caps on the main spells used. The information was taken from Wiki. Personal tests will verify their validity. Ok so what do we need to get the right amounts? Advantage with 'some merits' here is one can keep Vermillion Cloak on while casting. Of note, a 14' Ballad isn't hard to do (+8 String needed), either. But I provide this here for the bard who wants max range. Alternatively, remove minstrel's coat and demon helm+1, and add choral cannions +1, and you reduce total items needed by 1, and it is possible to keep more idle pieces on at all times. Adding Wind Merits, too, reduces items needed obviously. For etudes, ideally, use as much haste as possible so the spell can be cast on another party member if need be. Or simply so herculean can be refreshed asap. So I left room for sha'ir gages and walahra turban in both builds. I'm not going to include a how-to on March because there are many tiers. I do highly recommend trying to at least get to the +11% March buff though (+49 skill) which you should already be aiming for +58 on your Madrigal anyways. Eventually, gaining a perfect skill gear set in addition to Wind Skill 4/8 for a 11.5% March is also highly recommended. Currently it's best to just use every skill+ piece you have when casting Victory March. It works out that about every 7 skill adds .1% haste about. (Read http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52417 for more details. Essentially a player tested haste by using the 999 delay relic weapons and recorded it using a video capture program. The player then found exact delay measurements.) Things You Probably Didn't Know About Bard Charisma Does not Affect Buff Potency - This is a very common misconception. Buff potency is purely from Singing Skill + Instrument Skill. Most songs are capped at 75, but a few are not. They are the following Tier 2 songs: Etude, March, Madrigal, and Minuet. Some Songs we don't know about. Dragonfoe Mambo, Archer's Prelude, for example, are nearly impossible to test. To be safe, I stack all my Skill gear when I cast them. String Magic Skill affects the AoE Range of Buffs - A lot of bards discount the fact that Ballad for a BLM party is best cast with a String Ballad set. A bard can get a 15' range on Ballad II which can help make sure each BLM gets Ballad efficiently. Key word is Efficiently. Yes, you can Cast Wind Ballad twice, I agree. However, time wasted doing that is time taken away from status curing, heals, or crowd control. Additionally, a solid string ballad set is useful for putting Ballad on multiple tanks while avoiding AoE. Tier 2 Etudes Fade over Time - Etude 2s give +17 stat but they decay at 1 stat every 10 seconds. This requires them to be cast again and again if you wish to implement them to full effect. Using only Walahra Turban and Sha'ir Gages will give a recast time of 21 seconds. This means the Etude will fade 2 points before being able to reapply it. While not very important, attaining enough recast gear to lower it below 20 will optimize the use of tier 2 Etudes. The 'Song +1/+2' on an Instrument Does Two Things: Increases Buff Potency and Buff Duration - The benefit on potency is different for each song. For example, Cornette+1 gives Minuet +5 attack, but Traversiere+1 only gives Madrigal +4 accuracy. A constant, however, is that each +1 on an instrument is +10% Duration. Songs last 2 minutes, so +10% duration works out to be about 12 seconds. +2 is 20%, so it adds 24 seconds total. Lullaby lasts only 30 seconds, so +10% (from Mary's Horn) is 3 seconds. A Song's Remaining Time Determines The Stacking Order for New Songs - In many cases First In, First Out applies when casting songs. That is, if a bard casts March1, March2, and then Minuet4, Minuet3 that the songs on the party will be Minuet4 and Minuet3. The First Ins were the First Out. Right? Yes, this is the case. However, the reason this is the case is that March and Minuet both have a 'Song+2' Instrument. This gives their duration identical times, but what is actually happening is that the first March has the least remaining time which makes it the song that gets replaced. Ok let's try again. March2, March1, and then Ballad2, Ballad1. Songs on party should be Ballad2 and Ballad 1, right? No, this is absolutely not the case. The reason for this is that Ballad doesn't have a +2 instrument. This makes its duration significantly less (24 seconds less) than the Marches. When you cast Ballad2, it replaces the song with The Least Remaining Time on its Duration. This is March 2. After casting Ballad2, it comes into play with 2:00 on its timer and the March 1 still has 2:16 about on its timer. So when you cast Ballad1, it does the same thing, it will replace the song with the least remaining time on its duration. In this case, it's the Ballad 2. So in this situation you have Ballad 1 and March 1 on. How to prevent this? There are two ways. Way 1 is the quick band-aid fix. It is Always Cast Ballad 1 before Ballad 2. I personally don't like this, but I could see it working for some people. Cast Ballad1, ballad2, ballad1, and you'll always get Double Ballad on your party if a mage snags a melee song by mistake. The better method imho, is to just wait. Wait 17 seconds after casting your melee songs, then start your ballads. Look at the timers. March 2 and March 1 are just cast. March 2 has 2:16 and March 1 has 2:24. I wait 17 seconds. I cast Ballad 2 (takes 8 seconds), it replaces March 2. I have Ballad 2 with 2:00 on it and I have March 1 with 1:59 on it. See what happened? Now when I cast Ballad 1, it replaces March 1 which has the least remaining time on its duration. So if you just space-out your ballads properly, you'll never have a problem with this. Another useful thing to do with this is to use Troubadour and witness Songs not even replacing songs at all. If you have a Song that has a greater duration than a new song, that is, a Duration of 2:25 or greater left on it (which is possible with Troubadour), the song will not replace it at all. As long as a Troubadour'd song has 2:25 remaining on it or more, it will not be replaced by new songs. This can be useful if you want to keep a certain buff on someone, but the long recast timer on Troubadour makes this a rarely (if ever) used Trick. Soul Voice Must be Used before Casting Songs - Soul Voice does not retroactively increase songs. That is, buffs that are already active will not become more powerful when you use Soul Voice. Soul Voice'd Songs Stay Powered after Soul Voice the Ability Wears Off - Many bards know this, but this is here for completeness. Soul Voice lasts 3 minutes, but buffs last 2.5 minutes. It is possible to do 2 song cycles with Soul Voice for a total of 5 minutes of soul voice. Additionally, if you use Troubadour for the second cycle, you get a total of 7 minutes of soul voice. This is incredibly useful in Apollyon as you get your 2hr back on every floor. It's also a great place to practice it. I recommend doing your second cycle 2 minutes after using Soul Voice. Use a stop watch. Troubadour Affects Lullaby - Lullaby duration is doubled with Troubadour. Carnage Elegy is 50% Slow - Carnage Elegy is one of the most powerful debuffs in the game. It should be a priority in every event. Monsters have access to a more potent 'Massacre Elegy' that is 100% slow. Horn +1 adds 2% Slow to Elegy. Finale's Favorite Stat is Haste - Stack haste and nothing but haste when casting Finale. I recommend this because Finale has a very long recast. Also the Military Harp is garbage. Don't use it. I recommend Angel's Lyre as I mentioned previously. Though some things resist 'light'-based spells and they require a horn for Finale. One Bard Can Buff 2 or More Parties - To party swap, it's very very simple. First there are some limitations. One can't really do more than 6 songs reliably. 8 would be really rough, though doable. Think about it, 8 seconds to cast a song is 8*6 64 seconds which is a minute. Running back and forth is about a second per song, so that's 8 more seconds. Ballad only lasts 2 minutes. So you're at 70-80 seconds on an 8 buff cycle. Ok so a bard is limited to around 6 songs in most situations, and honestly, if set-it-up right, one won't need to do more than that anyways. There's a party that only needs ballad, and a party that needs ballad and another 2 songs, for example. That's usually how it works out. For example, a melee party that has only a whm in it or a rdm, or a blm party and a tank party. Keep those parties at 5 members and designate someone who isn't really busy as an inviter (or someone who is good at it). Make this macro for each party leader: A macro that just does /join could be useful as well. Have the leaders each make this macro: ('' parses as the last person who sent the player a tell. So if Jeff did /tell Kevin "Hey." And Kevin immediately typed-out and pressed enter, the game would parse as 'Jeff.') One can actually begin casting his song shortly after hitting the 'invite me' macro, and if he hits /join before the song is finished, the song will hit the new party. This can be extremely useful to an LS. This turns 1 bard into 2. This is best when the bard doesn't need to do any sleeps/status heals/cures etc so he's mostly just there to buff and elegy. Read: BRD/BLM. One final tip is for if a bard is casting the same songs for both parties, to use haste gear on your song macros. Sometimes there can be a slight delay on waiting for the song recast. Most of the time it isn't an issue, but it's not a bad idea to use haste for buffs. Also, 2 bards can buff 2 parties. This gets a bit trickier because communication has to be a lot more solid. But, I recommend adding to your party swap macro a /tell to the other bard that you're trying to swap parties. So add a second /tell on the 'invite me' macro that does /t OtherBard ((Jumping to new Area)). This helps improve communication. Pianissimo isn't the Best Way to Put Ballad on a PLD - Anyone who believes this is sorely mistaken. The best way is to have the party set-up so that ballad can be cast AoE on both the mages and the paladin at the same time. If you need to show your party this diagram, type it out exactly like this: mages brd pld> and ' - Most people are not aware of these. They are select alliance and select party. They do not put a cursor over the target, and they prevent blinking. I highly recommend them. '''Waits of .5' - A lot of people aren't aware you can put /wait 1.5 for example. Windower Macro'ing - It's simple. In the script folder create a .txt file with lines that say 'input /equip slot "item".' Load the .txt file in a macro line with /console exec "file.txt" in it. Pianissamo - A common practice is for bards to make a pianissamo macro and then have all of their songs as . I disagree with this. I recommend making a few songs that that will require pianissamo and put them on a seperate page that's easy to get to. I have them below my main page. Examples would be Mambo, Ballad, Minuet (for a ranger), and possibly Minne and March. Carol isn't a bad idea either. This makes all of the spells faster to cast. Why spend all of this gil/effort on items to decrease casting time if the macros themselves cost an extra second to execute? Think about it. Here's an example of what that macro might look like: Type the name into the macro if you know it beforehand too. This will save more time. Leveling Bard to 75 I just briefly want to give a few suggestions to a player who is planning on taking bard from 0 to 75 to be his main for EG. Maybe your LS needs a bard. Maybe you've always wanted to play it. Maybe you're completely new to the game. This section applies to all of those people. First thing is first, I would level WHM to 50 if you haven't already. I say this for a few reasons. First, WHM will be your primary support job for almost everything. So you'll level it to 37 anyways. And, WHM to 50 gives you all of the Teleports which are always useful. And the other reason is that BRD isn't very strong in 50 cap and below. It's one of the weakest jobs til Lv55 when it attains Ballad 2. Before that, it's very sub-par. In fact, WHM/BRD is many times stronger in 50 cap. (I understand for specific events/fights bard is invaluable, BCNM40 worms comes to mind, but for general fighting, it is not.) Level 50 WHM/BRD has Ballad 1 and Erase which will make it many times more useful in 50 cap events. Sacrarium comes to mind, which is a very common EG activity. And, obviously, if you already have another 40/50 cap job that you play, you can ignore this suggestion. After Leveling WHM to 37 or 50, I'd consider finishing the next two support jobs. You'll need NIN and BLM to 37 for EG as BRD. BLM37 isn't that important, but BLM15 is, and you may as well get it to 17 for Warp. I would even suggest taking BLM to 55 for retrace. NIN is pretty much exclusively used for merit party pull-whoring, but is needed nonetheless. I consider merit parties part of EG in this sense. After you do all of that, then I'd take-up leveling bard. I recommend getting all of the key gear you need first. Don't worry about Monster Signa, but do get a Chanter's Staff. You'll use it for all of your bard career. You can even go w/o Apollo's til 75 and full time chanter's, imho. I didn't, but there wouldn't be really anything wrong with that. I suggest an MP and Enmity- build for exp parties while building up. Elegy isn't til 41, and that's when you really need to worry about CHR. Requiem sticks fairly well at low levels, but then is hard to stick at high levels. CHR is not an important stat to bard in the early levels. In dunes, even, I suggest a melee bard/whm even because you then become one more person to be buffed. I don't know what FoV is like for brd, but i imagine it's tough for the job. brd is not a solo'ist. I recommend finding parties. but if you like FoV, more power to you. it's your game, play it how you like. i've mentioned it quite a few times now, but don't do brd/nin til 74. don't do piano+ballad unless in a merit party or in a bind. doing aoe ballad is tricky, but it's a skill you'll have to develop. use distance mod. or get an eye for it, or use a trick that i used. when i was on PS2, i used the corner of my screen to guage distance. if you put the paladin just at the corner of your screen, that was about 10' away. again, it may take time, and you may mess it up here and there, but the reward for your work is that your party is more efficient. it's worth it. exp/hour is *all* about efficiency. and that's really what a bard does. bard maximizes efficiency. it makes things die faster via melee buffs, and it provides more resources (mp) for the party. it also streamlines pulls. bard has downtime, and it uses its downtime to pull. dont' on-deck pull the same as a merit bard though. don't have two at camp for more than 10 seconds unless your party is really tearing things up. pull toward the end of the monster's life, and then sleep it, and focus on keeping it slept, then go back to your cycle. /nin isn't needed to on deck pull at all. watch hate too. don't buff while it's at camp. if you have enmity+ merits, and cast a cure and a buff or two in the 33 seconds the on deck monster is slept, voke may not rip hate if you have a war w/o enmity voking or a pld/nin relying on flash only. it's rare, but it can happen. so just focus on keeping it slept til it's voked off you. not to mention, when it wakes, if it hasn't been voked yet, it's definitely coming right for you, so keep yourself alive. I do want to hit on one more thing for leveling bard. Obviously you eventually want to collect every instrument. But, while leveling, make sure to just have a few key ones. Traverseire+1, Kingdom Horn, Faerie Piccolo, Siren Flute, and Cornette+1. Cast elegy, threnodies, and lullabies with Kingdom Horn. Cast the rest with their respective instrument. This will greatly reduce the inventory you need to devote to bard while leveling-it-up. Mary's Horn isn't that important. Give rangers Minuet. Merit Parties - A lot of things change for merit parties. Resist rates are not extremely low at either collibri or mmj. But, they're low enough (esp after 8/8 singing) that you should full time walahra and even build around sha'ir. I even use Swift Belt. Haste is useful for pulling for shadows and lullaby recast. Before you get 8/8 singing though, make sure you keep a good resist build up. Using Shadows is a very important concept. I'm NIN75, so I didn't have trouble doing brd/nin at all. But some bards may. This is especially true for bards who stopped nin dead at 37 and never really tanked on nin for real. The concept is fairly simple. Use Ichi as base, and Ni for emergencies. Going ichi to ichi is ideal, and ichi - ni - ichi - ni is used when you're against something highly accurate or fast attacking. In merit parties, though, you're never tanking, so ichi to ichi is almost never going to be a problem. So, when you need to put-up shadows for a pull, use Ichi unless time is an issue, and Ni is then good for that emergency. Keeping up a 3 song cycle is about the most you should try to do. A 4th song might be piano minuet for a rng or prelude for a rng. I also recommend having piano ballad 1 on hand, but piano ballad 2 should be enough if you have a good mage and a good party. Here's how to do it. Get it to where you have a monster1 at camp that's slept and monster2 that's being fought. Cast song 1, wait til monster1 is killed and they engage monster2, then pull monster3, sleep monster3, cast Ichi right away, cast song2, wait til monster2 is dead and they engage monster3, pull monster4, cast ichi right away, cast piano ballad, repeat. So you pull, ichi, song1, pull, ichi, song2, pull, ichi, song3. Why cast ichi right away? The reason for this is twofold. One, it makes sure you have a constant shadow wall. And 2, if you pull a resist, you may not see it in the log right away for a lot of reasons, and if you cast ichi right away, it will give keep you alive in the event of a resist. IF You Do Find Yourself in this situation, at MMJ you can cast Mary's Horn Horde and you're fine. But at Birds, you can't use Horde. So what you have to do is shadow tank for a second. If you cast Ichi right away, you'll have those extra shadows. Cast any spell on it, such as a threnody, and that will buy you a second if you need it. Count your shadows. As soon as the last shadow is taken away, cast Ni, and you should be fine. It will however mess with your cycle. So after they engage the new monster, cast your song, then cast ichi, then pull, and try to get yourself back to where you need to be. if a song wears, don't sweat it. surviving is more important than the song cycle. a strong merit party can keep the chain w/ only 1 (or sometimes none) of their songs. One more big tip about merit party pulling is Lamiabane. I highly recommend you do Assault til you are rank high enough to get lamiabane. the advantage of having a thrown returns for pulling is huge. pulling is now at a max range of 24' over 21' on elegy. if you cast elegy at 21' and the monster moves to 22', the pull is canceled. if you start throwing at 24' and the monster moves to 25' the throw and pull will still go through. this is significant as it lets you pull at max range which saves time running which makes pulls more consistent and faster. the other advantage is at colibri, and it's obvious, but they won't reflect a thrown weapon. also, you won't have them reflecting elegy in the first place. casting elegy at birds as a defensive song is nice, but how often does a reflected elegy go for a long time not getting erased? does your party even need the defense of elegy? more often than not, they don't. pulling w/ a lamiabane at colibri is a much better way in my opinion. of note, you can pull w/ lamia bane and elegy it at camp and it's still faster/better than just pulling w/ elegy. Level Sync Parties - Even in an EGLS you may find yourself playing bard in a level sync or level cap event. At 55 bard becomes a bomb for exp. bird camps come to mind, and that's probably what you'll be doing if you're brd for a level sync party. madrigal/minuet for melees is a good combination. also, i mentioned how to ballad a paladin. tell everyone this before you start: mages pld>